


Like Civil War Re-Enactment, Only a Different War and for a Different Purpose

by florahart



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Clint Barton has a lot of chest feels, M/M, Phil Coulson is a Dork, Smart Clint Barton, get-together, over the course of years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 17:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15224168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: Clint doesn't find Phil's nerdy personal-hobby files on the disappearance of Captain American's plane on purpose, but once he does, he kind of can't stop thinking about the problem.





	Like Civil War Re-Enactment, Only a Different War and for a Different Purpose

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all, the create date on this file says I started it, which because I am a linear writer means probably I wrote the first several paragraphs, FIVE YEARS ago. What the hell, self, that's not even reasonable. That's longer than a lot of fandoms' canons or fannish interest FFS.

It’s not like he’s looking for it. He would never—okay, so they’re training him as a spy and he’s done a shit ton of sneaking into places and going through other people’s stuff? But this is Coulson’s office. He would never.

Clint’s been to Coulson’s office a dozen times now, enough that he’s starting to feel like he’s not in trouble in the principal’s office (which he has fairly shitty memories of, let’s be honest) and he’s probably going to be asked for his opinion about an upcoming op (which is still startling to him, if we’re still being honest, but it makes him feel this _thing_ in his chest that he kind of can’t get enough of), but this is the first time he’s been here without Coulson present.

It’s not that he’s uninvited; he checks the clock and checks the memo in his pocket again, and he’s totally on time, but Coulson isn’t here.

Which …okay, so now what.

But he doesn’t feel like leaving is okay. He’s supposed to be here and so yeah, he’s not always good at orders, but he’s good at them with Coulson because, see previous: he asks for opinions and makes Clint feel the chest thing, and he doesn’t want to endanger any of that. So he stays.

Coulson has a couch, a comfortable one, and so Clint sits. And sits more. And looks at the clock more times. And fetches paperclips from the desk and a piece of paper from the printer so he can fold up a little origami vase thing with a wide bottom and a narrow neck to put on the other side of the table and chuck the paperclips into.

After a while, he starts bouncing them off the wall, off the light, off the table surface… okay, there is really only so much fun to be had with paperclips. Like, maybe he should take the rest of them and make them into a shiny medal to pin on his own chest for maximization of paperclip fun, except for how awarding himself a medal would be definitely weird, probably pathetic, and okay something he would do, except not any more because he's a professional. In training.

He puts his feet up on the table, then scowls and takes off his boots and puts them back up, and it’s been almost an hour and what the hell is this another one of those unannounced tests? Is someone watching him?

What if it is? What should he do, to be the most agentlike? Shit. He _is_ an agent, Level Two, kind of starting to make a name (ish… he doesn’t want to be sufficiently well-known to be a target or a problem, but at least internally, making a name) so whatever he does should be agentlike only it’s really going to be more Bartonlike.

He frets about it for a few minutes, then decides, okay, let’s narrow down. What would _Coulson_ do, and since Coulson is always super unflappable and cool even when that one time in Bogota he was beating the crap out of that dude with a big citrus fruit thing and a poncho (Clint wasn’t there to see it in person because he was on a roof saving Chase’s ass. But he’s seen the video. Total cool, and who the hell has a disabling move in mind for that scenario? God.), and so probably he would, like, just take a nap.

Clint has taken a nap in here before, one time, for a value of nap which means something more like passed out because of a lot of blood loss and stitches, and so he knows there’s a blanket in the file cabinet; however, the blanket was retrieved after Clint was already horizontal, facing the back of the couch because lying on his left side was a big fat no and what the hell he was with Coulson he could leave his back unguarded here if anywhere, so he doesn’t know which drawer it’s in.

So he looks at the file cabinet, standard four-drawer black metal, and tries to think about which drawer is the logical one for a blanket. Top or bottom, right? Either most out of the way or most convenient to grab. He’s seen the blanket folded before; sometimes Coulson catches a nap in here, too, so it gets used and stuff.

Finally, he reaches for the top drawer. Locked, so nope, unless it’s kept locked up which seems kind of ridiculous although this _is_ SHIELD, so who knows? Maybe?

Right, bottom then. Makes no sense to keep your bedding in the middle, right? So he pulls out the bottom drawer.

No blanket or pillow or related items, but a _bunch_ of neat files, which, seriously he’s unable not to notice the tabs on because seeing things is kind of his defining feature? And what the hell unlocked file drawer; Coulson is Level Six, and obviously all his secrets have secrets that have baby cousin secrets at home too.

But so he’s too busy staring to slam the drawer shut and try again, and then obviously, of course, the door opens, and Coulson is asking, “What are you doing, Barton?”

Thank fuck he has the presence of mind to answer calmly, because shitshitshit being caught being bad has all sorts of bad-touch associations for him and this is _Coulson_ who he wants to keep in the column of people who do not want to kill him for both the obvious reason that Coulson _can_ kill him (with a grapefruit thing) and the less outwardly-clear one that he wants Coulson to keep liking him, okay? Not enough awesome people like him. “Sorry, I thought when you got that blanket out that one time…”

“Third drawer,” Coulson says. “But it’s hardly naptime now.”

“No, I know. I just figured while I was waiting.” Clint shoves the drawer shut and plants his butt back on the couch, picking up the origami vase. “I already used up all the entertainment supplies sitting out.”

Coulson snorts and takes the little vase, weighing it in his palm and then peering down in. “So I see. Well, we probably won’t need a paperclip supply in Tanzania.” He sets the vase on the desktop and then pulls out the file drawer below and hands Clint a packet. “Tell me what you see.”

Clint relaxes and flips through the pages carefully. No damage done, whew.

\--

The thing is, what all the files were, were people and places that Clint knows are fifty years old. It’s World War II stuff, and why the hell, Coulson’s office, and also who is Steve Rogers? And what does he have to do with Valkyries?

And so he starts poking. 

He can’t help it. It’s who he is. He is a person who pokes things, even when they poke back. He is an excellent and persistent pokifier and probably it is too late for retraining on that front. So. Poking.

Finding out who Rogers is isn’t all that hard; he’s apparently a dead superhero that was tangled up with the reasons for SHIELD existing because of having led soldiers in the war and also knowing the higher-ups and oh hey, he died in a plane crash and it was a big tragedy because the loss of Captain America was bad for recruitment and finance and whatever.

On figuring out this much, Clint vaguely recalls some torn-up comic books from his childhood. Torn up because he was always about the fiftieth kid to lay hands on them, and so half the time they were missing the cover and maybe the first and last page, but even so, the lasting impression he guesses he came away with was that Captain America was a pretty cool dude, always standing up for people who’d been screwed by life (with which Clint had been incredibly, extremely, unrelentingly able to relate). He’d never really realized Captain America had a name, well okay, yes, he must have _had_ one but Clint didn't know it was _normal_ but okay, so it was Rogers. 

It takes a little longer to find out that the Valkyrie was the plane, because SHIELD is big on keeping secrets decades after they have become irrelevant, just in case. So where this leaves him is that Coulson has a drawer of files about a dead superhero and his crashed plane, and that still seems basically totally unreasonable until he also works out that oh _hey_ , the plane has never been found.

Like, all they know is it was flying from Germany to the US and was ditched to prevent catastrophe. And when it went down, actually down to the second pretty much because this Phillips dude that was apparently in charge at the time (maybe it's time to take one of those SHIELD history classes Clint's been avoiding because ugh, school, because he obviously doesn't know who _anyone_ is; this Carter chick Rogers was talking to _when_ that exact second of ditching happened turned out to have been important to the whole SHIELD everything) was apparently a crotchety asshole and also extremely detail-oriented.

Oh, and they also knew it was getting close enough to New York to have to ditch, so what the hell, can't be that far away, right?

Course, now he really wants to know: how have they been looking all this time and never found it? _Have_ they been looking? All the files were from older dates. Maybe they just look sort of when they’re in the area? But when he keeps rummaging around in SHIELD’s (available to his now-level-three ass) records, it seems like they looked all the _time_ in the fifties and up into the seventies before they just kind of stopped.

In which case, why the file in Coulson’s bottom drawer? It’s obviously not an active case, or it would have been locked, which Clint does not doubt because he's already considered the whole situation regarding baby cousin secrets, right? But so… so what?

So he does this only thing that makes sense: he breaks into Coulson’s office, on purpose, to read the Captain America Files.

Coulson doesn’t catch him, because he is stealthy and because he does it when he’s supposed to be stuck in Medical and Coulson is in Belgrade and also everyone with an office to the side of, below, or across from Coulson is otherwise assigned. Yeah, so the stuck in Medical part is super inconvenient because the immobilized hip is a giant pain in the ass (literally! Ha!) to drag through the vents quietly, but this is when all the rest of his conditions for access coalesce into one opportunity. So he goes.

Naturally the file cabinet is no longer unlocked, but among his spying and stealthing skills is lockpicking, which he already pretty much had due to his poor life choices and/or unavoidable life circumstances as a teenager anyway, and getting the drawer open isn’t that hard. He’s a little surprised it’s all still there (two new folders, a couple more obviously added-to), but he has all night and a good flashlight, so he starts to read.

What he learns is that it’s not an open case, it’s not a closed case, it’s not a case; it’s just SHIELD history with Coulson’s questions and notes in the margins of a bunch of pages.

Uh-huh.

Clint has never seen Coulson do marginal notes in anything, and by now, it’s been a year since he first saw the files and they’ve done another seventeen ops together. Coulson is always super on the ball, no need for making notes and he never asks questions because he always knows pretty much everything (okay, not really but Clint has a little bit of a hero-worship thing going on with the guy and anyway, he doesn’t know everything but he also doesn’t write this shit down), so what gives?

Finally, at the back of the drawer, he finds a binder of Mylar-protected trading cards and comic books in sleeves, and _oh_. Coulson is a _fan_. From like, way back. 

Like, a really dorky fan, apparently, because he’s written in synopses of some of the plot arcs, and there are pages here that obviously go back a lot of years, and oh god there are snippets that are _thisclose_ to being, like, self-insert fanfiction and basically this is awesome.

Clint resists the urge to take out and read the comic books, but does not resist the urge to hug the binder to his chest because somehow it makes him feel all sorts of new sloppy feelings (more chest feels, great) to see this side of Coulson.

Then he puts everything back, hauls himself out through the vents, and goes back to Medical, where they have in fact missed him but are finally becoming sort of resigned to his little walkabouts when confined so at least the lecture is mostly _pro forma_.

Then he sits there while his ass muscles grow back around where everything is stapled in place and waits for Coulson to get back. This turns out to be plenty of time to consider how to broach the topic, because apparently butt PT takes forever.

\--

Eventually he decides not to. Broach the topic. That would involve talking about personal stuff, and he knows he sucks at that. And Coulson never tells him anything about it. But still, he takes the basic and advanced history courses and also a couple of other ones on military craft development and theory of war, and then after a while he bugs the base librarian into helping him with research skills. Once that's all done, in his spare time, which he has more of than he ever thought he would because between missions his job is mostly to stay ready, and that _can_ stretch out into whole days, but can also be done efficiently in a few hours a day and it's not like he has a hoppin' social life, he kind of starts looking at the Howard Stark files regarding where they searched. After a couple of months he starts reading up on meteorology, and folds what he learns into his study of craft and flight records. 

They’re crap, of course, the flight records and also the weather records. Apparently in the forties there was no handy computer generation of exact GPS position and also the weather forecast seemed to mostly involve casting runes or something. Maybe spin the bottle if three of the players were lower primates and/or rodents. Still, there _is_ data, it’s just not _good_ data.

But hey, he’s always heard it’s good to have a hobby, which also comes up in his mandated periodic sessions with Psych (because: no hoppin' social life, see), and also Coulson keeps suggesting it, and _apparently_ when one is a master marksman, marksmanship is a job not a hobby.

Fine.

He creates himself an unnamed and very specialized hobby of recreating old flight scenarios in the simulators, and when Psych asks tells them it's kind of like those dorks who do Civil War re-enactment (which he saw once in 1986 while Carson's was in Alabama and which, close enough; his is just a different war and very specific). This is also what he tells everyone who asks about his choice to pay for extra sim hours and request various files from offices that have had them in boxes for decades. (Everyone agrees it's pretty weird, sure, but then, he used to wear a purple unitard and shoot apples off people’s heads from a trapeze. Weird is not that weird). People quit asking what the hell after a while, and that's good because he plans to keep after it; understanding old patterns makes it easier to see new ones, and Clint is a very kinetic learner.

He sort of wishes he could go back to the second grade and tell Miss Watkins that kinetic learners are totally a thing, because looking back it's very clear to him where school went awry, but that's water under the bridge and down a gully and out to sea, and at least he knows now. At least now he has some kind of oomph behind his assertions to his own quivering self-worth that he is _not either_ too stupid for any of this, just no one took the time and effort to work out how to help him see. Being a freak is okay if one’s freakishness has logic and rules and hurts no one, for fuck’s sake, quivering self. Anyway.

Eight months and a lot of side roads into this project, he asks for a set of flight recordings from the day Rogers went down. Not Valkyrie, but other craft.

Coulson shows up at the simulator the morning he sets out to emulate them one by one. Which, okay, little awkward, but since Clint has also requested, over the last fifteen or so weeks, flight recordings from a dozen other specific days, and also records of seagoing vessels and weather reports, maybe he’ll buy that it’s a hobby?

But no, he just says, “Looking for a blanket, huh?”

“I _was_ ,” Clint retorts automatically. “ _Not_ my fault you kept it in a middle drawer. What kind of logic is that?”

“The logic that says the thing that I only keep in my office for personal reasons goes in the bottom drawer,” Coulson says. “But you knew that.”

“Well _now_ I do.”

“And so your records request…?”

Clint shrugs. Fine, so he has to explain. “Stark was looking in the wrong place, and you want to find it. I can find it, so.”

“Stark. Howard Stark, genius and millionaire, was looking in the wrong place. And you know this how?”

Clint purses his lips because this is going to sound like bullshit and he knows it, but, “I know this because I know how things fly. I know how arrows go wrong when their fletching is fucked up in specific ways, and I know what happens when there are gusts. I understand all that, and I mean, Howard Stark was a pilot and an inventor, but no offense to him, he wasn’t me.”

Coulson raises his eyebrows. “And if I say it’s shitty of you to start with my research?”

“What? No. I read it, yes, but I did my own—your notes are, okay, mostly good but sometimes also wrong. Because they are based on… look, do you want me to stop? I can find a different hobby. Knitting, maybe?”

Coulson looks at him for a long time, then shakes his head. “Barton, I want that plane found worse than I want to be the one to find it, but fair’s fair. You should tell me what you know.”

Clint points at the other seat in the simulator pod. “Maybe watch instead?”

“Watch what?”

“Watch me make the corrections the pilots had to make in the weather conditions to fly true.”

“Why?”

“Valkyrie was damaged, probably listing, and Rogers was no pilot,” Clint explains. “I’m reverse-engineering where I think that plane would have gone under those circumstances. I know what actual pilots did, and Stark was working for the Army, helping out with the early instrumentation, so there are records of what their experiences were.”

“You don’t think Stark did that?”

“His notes don’t say he did. Also, he didn’t have sims like we do, and he didn't have modern meteorological records that make patterns easier to make sense of. Also, look, you know what Stark’s genius kid is like, arrogant as hell. Probably it comes with the brain? I think Stark made assumptions to begin with and never interrogated them.” Clint holds his hand over the button to close the pod door. “You coming or not?”

Coulson steps up in and sits in the other seat. “Interrogated?”

“What. My research also included a lot of reading into the social setting so I could understand why the records were or were not kept on various parts of the project. Interrogating assumptions comes up a lot in the humanities and social sciences.”

\--

It takes a long time for Clint to feel satisfied with his research. Which, that's weird for him. He trains all the time to perfect his shooting, but that's different; it's generally repetition, not new skills every day, but that's what this work feels like. Every day he fine tunes and checks, flying missions he somehow no longer has to pay for time for (up to a point, anyway; Coulson doesn't say anything about it, but it seems like he must have made some kind of requisition because Clint's on the schedule pretty much any time he wants it as long as it doesn't mess with the training programs for newer pilots or with his own ops). His strategy is to fly one pilot's mission, use its records to assess weather from the day, use that information to try to duplicate what the next guy might have experienced, and feed all that into a larger pattern. It's the thinkiest work he's ever done, and it takes for _ever_ , especially around and between things like hauling out to New Mexico to disable a cranky fallen god (what the hell) and occasionally helping Coulson and/or Natasha clean up the mess from Iron Man’s latest exploits, but it also means that by the time a year has gone by, he flies like he shoots: he aims the plane and sees in his mind's eye the route and the wind and everything that needs to happen, and he doesn't really need instruments any more for a damn thing.

Which, all right, Coulson's given up on him finding anything, because a year is a long time, but it's really fucking convenient when he's on a flight where instrumentation fails at night in a snowstorm during a new moon, and Clint can land the plane where he means to despite the conditions and the fact that his port engine keeps trying to stall out. Just for that, all his work and time makes _him_ more valuable, and also means he's in demand as an instructor on multiple fronts.

He initially thinks this is ludicrous, but he turns out to be a popular teacher because he explains in simple language, he demonstrates _everything_ , and he assumes that students who don't take well to one teaching style might just learn differently, and tries to adapt his approach. It doesn't always work, but generally the effort alone is valued enough that students will try harder to do what he says. 

And then it turns out that translates into field leadership, too. Which means he is popular for ops, and he's also turning out good students. It's confusing. Actually, when he looks, what the fuck, he finds out he made Level Five faster than almost anyone (Coulson was faster, but came from the military in the first place; Fury is a special case in a lot of ways; the late Frank Jameson was faster but also burned out soon after...) and is on the fast track to move up again, and it's _okay_ that Coulson doesn't think he can find Rogers because he looks at him with respect and tells him he's doing great work, and Clint is finally (okay, so it's been years now, so he's kind of slow on this, intellectual worth establishment be damned) getting used to the chest feels.

Also, Coulson sometimes drags him to the canteen so they can eat together, and lets Clint bring him donuts and weird bento box creations, and they're friends, and it's kind of awesome. The chest feels want something a little more intense, but Clint is in no way risking this. He's got everything he needs.

The thirty-ninth time Clint feeds all the surrounding weather and flight data into the sim and then tweaks Valkyrie, whose blueprints he _finally_ got access to after a _lot_ of wrangling with SHIELD’s German analogue, a little and tries to make sense of her path, it diverges significantly from previous sims, and he follows it through to a crash in New York. Well, actually across the water and a mile and a half into New Jersey, but since previous sims all had Valkyrie landing either upstate somewhere or maybe even up into the Toronto area based on what they knew about her going up, this seems like a useful change. Rogers wouldn’t have ditched if he wasn’t going to land somewhere populated, Clint reasons, because at that point no one really knew what a nuke _was_ , or at least, no one was saying where any actual soldiers or decent people might hear. He’d have known it was a motherfucker of a _bomb_ , sure, but a big boom out in the woods is like a tree falling: does anyone hear? 

So he goes back to the tweaks and looks at what he changed. Every time so far he’s changed something, but he’s done it kind of at random. Sure, researchers are usually methodical, but Clint feels like if he runs the sim without knowing which factor he changed, he’s kind of unbiased about expectations? Anyway, this time he significantly lightened her, blowing the blue cube Stark recovered later out with the entire array holding it. Stark didn’t record finding the array, but then, that wasn’t what he was looking for, and Clint decided long before now the guy didn’t generally record stuff if he didn’t think other people needed to know it. Anyway. The weight of the array itself probably isn’t the relevant change, since he’s certainly played with mass before, but now, if the whole array came out, that would also unbalance… Clint thinks about it for a while, running in his mind’s eye a private simulation of his own: the big plane, unbalanced like _so_. The wind, arctic air currents, the jolt when the housing blew apart. The blow to her aerodynamics. The weight of Captain America himself, running forward on a dying plane – Clint’s taken that part into account before, once he realized that his serum made Cap not just six-two and built, but six-two, built, and _heavy as shit_. Coulson doesn’t believe him, but Clint’s seen Stark’s original math on the serum and maybe had a handful of darkweb conversations with deranged individuals trying to recreate the stuff, and he’s sure Cap probably weighed something over 400 pounds, maybe closer to 450, because he was alllllll muscle and that muscle was dense like a dying star. 

Not that he has any reason to think Cap was dying _prior_ to crashing the plane, just, he was definitely a full bulldozer after he took the serum, is all. Feeding him on rations must have been a stone bitch. He was hard to hurt partly because he healed well (that’s documented, and Clint thinks both Erskine and Phillips were constitutionally unable to be dishonest in their notes), but also partly because a bullet hitting his abs was kind of like a bullet hitting…. Maybe not Kevlar, but maybe, like, chain mail or something – damage, sure, but nothing like a bullet hitting a regular person’s soft and explodable gut.

Anyway. Clint’s been starting from the assumption that Cap’s change of position was relevant for a while along with Schmidt’s demise (same issue; he was a leaner iteration but still a massive one), but what if it was accompanied by not a small hole where the blue cube went through, but rather, a ragged, air-catching hole that would mess up lift versus attitude anyway, and also wreak havoc on directional stability? What if the plane, and it was advanced as hell, was contending with that while making its own corrections to reach the intended target in New York? A smaller hole probably wouldn’t have turned on any such corrections algorithm, but it’s in the sim’s options, and it came on this time. So what path would that create?

He runs the identical sim again, and this time she lands on the Upper West Side; the third time she lands in the Hudson. He maps all three paths, labels with timestamps, runs the clock on it, and finds where he must have ditched… and it’s a good twenty miles from the outside edge of Stark’s search pattern.

Hot damn.

He saves the whole mess to disk – the sims, the conditions, the map, the old search pattern, and adds a note about some of his own assumptions (if Cap was just ditching, surely he’d have allowed the drag to behave however it wanted as long as it didn’t take his ass to New York, but if for some reasons he did not, then sure, the circle would widen enough it might barely intersect with Stark’s, but…) and lets himself into Coulson’s empty office. 

He leaves the disk on the desk with a ribbon and a hand-written note. _How do you feel about ice-hiking?_

It’s worth every minute of research to have Coulson call him actually, legitimately, seriously breathless and nearly squealing. Because Coulson, of course he does, has the authority to put a satellite to work on Clint’s x-marks-the-spot, and Well Hello There Is A Disruption Under That Ice.

It could be something else, they remind each other. If their ice-imaging were good at reporting what’s under whole icebergs, they’d already know where the damn thing had gone down. So yeah. It could be a revolution-era ship that froze into the icebergs two hundred years ago, or a more recent incident of some kind, although SHIELD has nothing else that would explain it. But still, Clint reminds Coulson a hundred times they’re not absolutely sure, because he kind of can’t stand the thought that Coulson might end up disappointed. The feels in his chest are also not down with that potential.

In the end, there’s no way Coulson isn’t going on the exploratory trip, and so Clint is going with him. Obviously. Hence the question about ice-hiking.

\--

Glaciers and icebergs are really, _really_ fucking cold. Clint isn’t sure his balls haven’t actually retreated 110% into his abdominal cavity and sent out a petition to remain there permanently (petition denied; Clint _likes_ his balls, thanks). Coulson has a runny nose, and it’s running and freezing so he looks chapped and miserable, and Clint can’t really help because “can I help melt your boogers” is not the kind of relationship they have. On the up side, they’re only about four miles from the disruption, and you know what? Clint looks down at the ice they’re walking on, and it’s… it’s not streaked, because there is no fucking way there are still literal drag marks from seventy fucking years ago even _if_ everything here has been frozen since like seventy years minus half an hour ago, but there’s a weird prevailing pattern to it that wasn’t there until they crossed a fault half a mile ago, and that has to be meaningful. He stops, waits for Coulson to notice, and shrugs. “I think my mark’s a little off.“ He gestures maybe twelve degrees west of their previous path. “I think a little more this way.”

“Because…?”

“Ice has a ripple,” Clint says. He doesn’t want to explain in detail because ugh, pulling down his wet/frozen mouth covering suuuucks, but he crouches and traces a curve on the solid, mostly clear top layer of ice under the dry blowing snow cover. “Here.”

“I don’t see anything.”

Clint shrugs. “We could split up? I know the satellites show the disruption, but I mean, the difference will only be like a quarter of a mile, maybe three tenths, at this distance. Assuming a little under 4 miles, I mean. Could be more half a mile if the actual distance is significantly different.”

“We’re not splitting up.”

“Kay, well I mean, we can go the way we have been, it’ll just be a little more walking if I’m right. And I might not be.”

“Bullshit. You’ve done the research, and you see things no one else does.” Coulson taps his ear and adjusts the team’s trajectory a hundred yards ahead of them, then starts walking next to Clint again.

Clint tries to decide how his chest feels about Coulson Just Believing Him, and also calling in the correction without telling anyone it’s Clint’s eyes and gut that say so. Mostly, he feels a little giddy, although given how much gear he’s wearing, maybe it’s oxygen deprivation? Or it’s his continuing crush on his boss/handler? Anyway.

\--

It turns out, the thrill of seeing Coulson’s face when they for real and unquestionably uncover a wingtip is super worth all the trouble, but is _nothing_ compared to when, twenty hours and a lot of melting and digging later, they find Cap’s body, intact (and 419 pounds, thank you very much; the first guy that tries to drag that dead weight is very, very surprised and Clint can’t help the smirk). 

And then, _that’s_ nothing, compared to the moment the med bay calls to report metabolic activity. Clint isn’t on the phone, just Coulson, but they’re sitting together under poorly-spread blankets in a shipboard office on a couple of gameday glove-warmer pad things with a shot of really good whiskey and Clint’s unlaced boot propped up on the little table that’s bolted down between the pair of equally-bolted benches.

Coulson’s face changes, then changes again, and then he signs off and gulps down the whiskey. 

“What’s up?” Clint asks. He knows Coulson just won’t tell him if it’s above his clearance level, so he doesn’t bother with any of that.

Coulson shocks him by grabbing a handful of his shirt and pulling him across the table, whiskey sloshing, to lay a hard, crazy kiss on his mouth.

Which, okay, he’s fully interested in doing kissing things with Coulson, but what the hell what is this? After probably longer than he should have let the situation continue, he pulls away. “Uh. Phil?”

Coulson doesn’t answer, just leans his forehead against Clint’s. 

“Okay, well so, like, I don’t, um. Okay, so it’s fine that. But like, it seem kind of. Well, anyway, sudden, but okay, but maybe why?”

Coulson huffs a little laugh. “Sorry. For the suddenness.”

Well, that’s better than sorry for the kissing.

“Turns out, they think he’s alive.”

“Who, Frankestein’s monster?”

“No. Captain America.”

Clint frowns, then pulls away enough to look Coulson in the eye. “Uh. Maybe they were joking? I mean, superhero and all, but… seventy years?”

“They think he basically hibernated. Apparently, and you’re going to like this, they see subtle signs of starvation, like his body has been living off of its own stores. He’s lost weight while he’s been under. Also, he has brain activity.” 

Clint grins. “Four-fifty, what did I tell you! Wait, okay, seriously?”

“They said seriously. I don’t think they would be stupid enough to pull that kind of prank?” Coulson sounds a little wobbly and uncertain, which does extremely unfortunate things to Clint’s chest feels. 

He rolls aside of where he’s been more or less holding himself in some kind of weird plank over Coulson, landing on his hip next to him on the bench. “Yeah, if it turns out you’re wrong about that, I’ll be happy to explain the error of their ways,” he says, maybe in a little bit of a growl and what the hell who gave him permission to be the emotional protector of Phil Coulson, Badass of SHIELD?

“Get in line,” Coulson says. “Also, so as much as I want to keep appreciating and toasting your success here…”

“You wanna go watch,” Clint says. “No, I get it. You should do that.”

“But truly, the fact that you pulled this off—”

“Yep, I’m amazing, my second-grade teacher was not right about my potential, and you have an old-school superhero to go gaze longingly upon,” Clint says. He doesn’t really feel that light about it, because if Captain America is alive, and wakes up, Coulson is totally going to start spending all his time with him and …and Clint is already officially short his only hobby; he doesn’t really want to lose his only friend. Except Natasha, but she’s more sister than just …friend? Ugh. Feels.

“You _are_ amazing, and also your second-grade teacher has been reminded of the error of _her_ ways,” Coulson says. “Maybe just half an hour? I’d bring you with, but… Level Eight. Sorry.”

“What? Level Eight …Half an hour until what?”

“Until I come back?”

“Sure.” Clint expects not to see him again until they land back in DC, but polite lies are nicer than just shoving him aside, so he lets it stand. Maybe the level eight part is a polite lie, too? After all, why would Coulson start telling state secrets now?

Coulson gets up and straightens himself out with a couple of good jacket twitches and shoulder shimmies, and goes to the door. “Thirty. Start the clock.”

Clint doesn’t start the clock, for the aforementioned reason, then frowns at the door. Wait, reminded of the error of her ways? What?

\--

Coulson is back in 29:19, which shocks the shit out of Clint, who has swiped the unused heater thing previously under Coulson's ass and made a warm, if short, cocoon bed on one of the benches. He's not really napping, because sure he likes naps but he's nowhere near fully safe enough here to do anything so asinine as drop his hold on consciousness around strangers, especially when he feels the course change 20 minutes in, but he _is_ resting his eyes and letting himself be kinda floaty while the warmth soaks in. His balls have rescinded their previous request and he's even getting toasty enough they're kinda floppy and comfortable like the rest of him when the door whooshes open. Clint opens his eyes, then frowns at his watch. "Uh."

"He's not awake, but he's gaining on it every minute," Coulson says. "We're redirecting to New York so we can try to wake him in familiar surroundings."

"Oh, yeah, that oughtta totally work," Clint says. "What's Fury gonna do, make a 1943 Brooklyn walkup out of drywall and recorded traffic noise?"

"Something like that."

Clint makes a disparaging noise. "Super not going to work," he says. "Details on shit like that are rarely very good when it's a few weeks. Someone's gonna fuck up their research somewhere." He feels their landing gear dropping and starts unfurling his way out of his blanket burrito.

Coulson purses his lips. "Maybe it'll be easier that way," he says. 

"What way?"

"If he realizes the time is wrong on his own, rather than us telling him?"

Clint thinks about that. "Yeah, okay, I can see it. You oughtta just play an old ballgame in the room. Record says he was a nut for the Dodgers."

"You studied everything, didn't you?"

"I needed all the details."

Coulson waits.

"What, okay, I needed them to solve a problem you wanted solved, and like, okay earlier there was the kissing so I usually wouldn't say this but like, I get the feels with you, man. You want a thing, I want to give you it. So yes, I studied everything sue me please just don't give me shit about it I know I'm ridiculous."

Coulson shakes his head. "Not ridiculous. Thorough. Loyal. Smarter than Stark's dad, apparently; by the way _please_ when the time comes let me be the one to tell him that."

"Uh, not sure it's exactly a true statement?"

"It is. You made up a whole new specialty in order to solve this problem, and Clint, I looked. You never made a misstep."

"I made lots. _Dozens_ of sims."

"Improvements every time. Hey Clint?"

Clint's busy looking at his hands, and somehow, because Coulson is a ninja, he's snuck up on him. He holds out a hand and pulls him upright. 

"Uh. What?"

"Am I to understand you're not opposed to more kissing?"

Clint bites his lip. "This better not be another test."

Coulson stares at him, then squints a little, then chuckles. "I can't decide if that was more you or more pre-Serum Rogers," he says, "but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt."

Clint considers asking which direction is beneficial in this case, but it doesn't matter; by the time he opens his mouth Coulson is kissing him again, slow, seeking, gentle, firm. It's a little breath-stealing, but Clint's okay with developing a new insta-hobby of remaining alive without breathing if it means this can keep happening, so he goes with it.

The landing jolts them apart, and Clint bites his lip again. "Um, so..."

"So, as this was your project I arranged clearance for you when you want it, but I'm sure it's going to be at least hours, maybe days, to wake him up."

"So if I suggest we should get some rest, get changed, get cleaned up..."

"I do feel a little grimy."

"Me too. But, like, I don't have quarters in New York."

"Then I suppose we'll have to make do with mine. Shower's a little small for anything interesting, but the bed's good."

Clint's balls squirm a little at the implication, but he grins and leans forward for another kiss. "Good soft or good sturdy?"

Coulson shrugs. "Wanna find out?"

(Yes. Clint does. He's glad to find out the answer is, "both.")


End file.
